Dans la leçon Entre chien et Loup, vous avez écrit “en quête de nourriture”; pourquoi pas “de la nourriture” ?
Hi
I guess it is the same in English or in German for that matter:
‘on the search for food’ (food in general)
not ‘on the search for the food’, which you may perhaps say if you were in search for a specific kind of food.
Meow :))
That makes sense, but then, in English we don’t say “give me the water”, just “give me water”; français usually takes the article…I guess it’s very specific to the expression. Thanks for pointing this out…
You are right. It is actually shown as “en quête de nourriture” (without the quotation marks) in my Harrap’s Universal dictionary. So all is well!
No Mircenkova, it is not ‘very specific to the expression’. :)))
You are right, you do want to say Donnez-moi de l’eau, but that would be specifically available water, and you also want to say Donnez-moi de la nourriture.
But just as it is ‘en quete de nourriture’, it also is ‘en quete d’eau’, as in both cases it is an unspecified quality or unknown source.
You could however say ‘en quete de la nouriture’ which you have misplaced somewhere.
Also for example:
En quete d’abri - on the search for shelter (any shelter)
or
En quete de l’abri - on the search for an already known shelter
‘de’ with or without article is a rather complex matter, if you want to know the details check this out:
The french.about website is a great site in general for learning French expressions or grammar. It also comes in other languages and I find it quite entertaining to just browse it at random.
French is not my mother tongue, so perhaps a native French speaker can explain this better.
Isn’t Linqg great…what a community !
La phrase est tout a fait correcte, Lorsqu’on dit “en quête de quelque chose” c’est que l’on ne recherche pas qq chose de précis, mais qq chose en général.
Si l’on utilisait un article “le/la/les” cela voudrait dire qu’on recherche qq chose de très précis.
“je suis en quête de l’appartement que j’ai vu a la télévision” L’appartement, signifie celui-là, pas un autre. mais si l’on dit “je suis en quête d’appartement.” ca signifie que l’on cherche un appartement , n’importe lequel.
En résumé: si article: précis, pas d’article: recherche générale, imprécise
-en quête d’amour
-en quête de notoriété
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